I highly doubt they're proud of it. After all, they can't monopolize and cash in on it, I kinda wonder why they didn't try to buy a law for it yet. I mean, there is a market for it, isn't there? And all that money going to someone without a cut for the MAFIAA, that can't be!

I love the reasoning of why the Protect IP act is being pushed...make using stuff that's already been made against the law to use unless one is using it in accordance with an industry, and THEN people will stop using it because it will be against TWO laws. That'll work. Forget about the collateral damage to law abiding American citizens.

Protect IP matters because Detriot is an industrial wasteland. Intellectual Property is becoming more and more of the product we have to export. Because of this we escalate its importance to the point where at some future point we must defend our intellectual property using men with guns on foreign soil, defending our right to charge what we will for the broadcast rights to Justin Bieber's latest album on the peoples of India and China - who don't want to hear that crap anyway.

The whole thing is sick. Eventually the world is going to call us to the carpet on that and make us make useful stuff for the value we get. And then what have we got?

IP is no comparison to manufacturing industries. Whole industries including equipment and expertise had to be shifted before exports became imports. With IP to extort reduced tax rates and other concession, you just shift the country of ownership of the IP, takes a quick pen stroke and it's done and your tax base is screwed. IP is by far the most dangerous and unreliable national income base and is bound for inevitable failure.

Way to truly rebuild the economy is via fair trade. A international WTO system

You're onto something here. Maybe it's time we got up close and personal with the individual folk behind these attacks on our rights. Task: Lookup domestic info and current locations of studio executives and politically evil "representatives", their spouses and offspring for tracking purposes. Look for avenues of humint and telint.

Slashdot's not the right place for this so let's continue this discussion elsewhere.

Obviously anyone here understands that the Protect Act has NOTHING to do with the stupidity that the RIAA is spewing. But let me restate it for those that don't understand. They are using recent events as a False Flag-like excuse. https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/False_flag [wikimedia.org] I am not claiming in any way, shape or form that they are responsible for said events. Merely that they are taking advantage of them in this way.

I was actually wondering why they didn't use Fukushima as an excuse to ask for some kind of law, but perhaps they got a little more wary now that a few judges noticed that their excuses aren't even close to resembling sanity.

But this is at least somehow, in some way,.... oh hell, it's on the internet, what else needs to match?

Because adding more regulations to what is already one of the most regulated industries in this country doesn't give them any additional control. They already have "authority" to take over in the case of nuclear accidents as well, so what really to they have to gain by making a big deal of this. No new plants are seriously being considered so traditional energy companies aren't concerned with trying to prevent competition.

Because adding more regulations to what is already one of the most regulated industries in this country doesn't give them any additional control. They already have "authority" to take over in the case of nuclear accidents as well, so what really to they have to gain by making a big deal of this. No new plants are seriously being considered so traditional energy companies aren't concerned with trying to prevent competition.

Well maybe if you guys came up with a plan to dispose of the spent fuel from the reactors you wouldn't have this problem. One full reactor worth of spent fuel every 18 months is a serious accumulation over the span of the life of a nuclear plant - currently 60 years. That's 40 reactors worth of spent fuel per reactor, and even at half strength that's 20 reactors of spent fuel heat creation per reactor. Even selling the power generated by the spent fuel ponds is looking like an option now. At this point

I am not claiming in any way, shape or form that they are responsible for said events. Merely that they are taking advantage of them in this way.

Are you or are you not putting forward the claim that lulzsec and anonymous are false-flag operations? You don't get to have it both ways.

I find it amazing that people keep wanting to push around the "false flag" meme. Can't the RIAA simply be opportunistic parasites taking advantage of other's activities? You know. Like record executives.

What we have here is a classic "wag the dog" where you use something completely unconnected to what you are trying to do to ram something through. Saudi terrorists attack New York? Blow up Iraq. What does one have to do with the other? Not a fucking thing except the first event was helpful in getting an agenda pushed.That is the difference my friend.

No - Wag the Dog is when you generate an event to distract from another event. Have you actually seen the movie?

I can see why people like to toss around phrases like "false flag" and "wag the dog". They're emotionally charged statements that invoke a lot of passion without much requirement to actually understand the concept, much less think about the application thereof. One can invoke "false flag" and get a lot of riders to jump on your bandwagon even though this situation has absolutely nothing to do with a "false flag" tactic. Kind of like what the RIAA is doing in invoking lulzsec, et al. Wait a second. I see what you did there...

I find your refusal to accept the provided definitions interesting. I can cite a false flag event similar to the one RIAA is using. The cold war was started because ideological claims of events that had no bearing on reality. There was no "reason" for the cold war to exist other than those in power feared outcomes that were contrary to their political beliefs. Now, If you continue to insist on a different definition, I'll accept that your opinion differs from mine. But the point still stands that a false fl

Political or religious ideologies will sometimes use false flag tactics. This can be done to discredit or implicate rival groups, create the appearance of enemies when none exist, or create the illusion of organized and directed opposition when in truth, the ideology is simply unpopular with society.

I agree. False Flag is perhaps the most dangerous tactic of all. The government has unlimited pardons to do anything - while hiding it. Given a sufficiently hideous delivery, freedom fighters can be painted as Tin Foil Hats.

i think you missed something. hacking groups like this have been active for as long as it's been possible. so the question you should be asking is why is the media all of a sudden paying attention.

i would be prone to say that it is because these hackers have been very vocal and begging for this attention. but that is actually not really new either. so something else seems to be going on. i suppose its the mixture of them being politically motivated and massively successful in their hacking efforts (so

I've heard ProtectIP bans any site that links to copyrighted material.
Is it true that ProtectIP could shut down every single forum on the Internet if they wished? Afterall, someone only needs to post a link to copyrighted material

But rest assured it won't. That would expose how flawed the law is. I didn't read it, but I am fairly sure there is some safeguard against someone just carpet bombing high profile sites with lawsuits, something like "has to be done by the rights owner". And of course they will not risk their precious tool.

So the logic here is the same as it has been for every rights-compromising measure put forth so far this century; "[name of enemy] is going to cause massive amounts of economic/physical/spiritual damage unless [measure] is undertaken immediately. [measure] will of course restrict your rights, but it's all in the name of protecting something greater than you."
Of course, that something invariably reduces to somebody else's profit, which is likely already happening at your expense, so why change the status quo now.

The other day, after reading yet another news story about the censorship moves in Australia and more PROTECT IP stuff, I decided that it was time to try out configuring Privoxy to forward everything via SOCKS5 to Tor. I was expecting a much bigger performance hit than I actual did, though, which was a pleasant surprise. Sure, its annoying having to enter CAPTCHA tags for Google all the time, but that's really not that big of a hassle. For the less technical people, Vidalia + the Tor Button for Firefox are pretty much fool proof. Between advertisers, stories about repression of online descent in the middle east and asia, Facebook and Google tracking people all the damned time, etc, I think (or, at least, I would like to think) that it might only be a matter of time before more and more 'normal' people, even those who really, truely, have nothing to hide, start doing something similar.

When Comcast starts filtering port 9050 like they do with 25, then we'll know we've pretty much lost the Internet once and for all. But hey, at least the Department of State supports Internet freedom in China, right? pffft.

Sony is a member of the RIAA, after all. I applaud LulzSec's actions (most of 'em, anyway) and urge them to keep up the good work.

I was the "victim" of a group much like LulzSec before the turn of the century, and it was hilarious (to me, anyway) indeed. My site, the Springfield Fragfest, made fun of everybody (for the lulz before "lulz" was coined). I was kind of the Don Rickles of the Quake world -- I made fun of everybody, and everybody I made fun of became fans (well, almost everybody, some folks have no sense of humor). I'd have folks' pet shamblers pissing on the couch, Thresh taking speed, etc.

There was a group much like LulzSec (for all I know it might have had some of the same members) that was in the nerd news, so I posted a bit about them accompanied by a photo of a group of Down's Syndrome kids as illustration.

They broke into my host's servers and removed the <img> tag and photo... and left the text intact! I was honored as well as amused.

But, you know, the people (and I use that term loosely) LulzSec are targeting have no sense of humor whatever. Again, guys, keep up the good work, and thanks for the lulz. I hope reports of LulSec's death are greatly exaggerated.

Yeah, because removing an image tag is roughly the same as posting peoples' login information, proprietary source code or a list of email addresses to a porn site and telling people to ridicule anybody they know on the list. Gosh dang kids these days just have no sense of humor.

LulzSec is a criminal organization. They're certainly not in it for the "lulz" and they're certainly not doing it for some lofty philosophy.
Seeing as they couldn't even access some of the databases of the sites they "hacked", it leads me to believe that they're just throwing every trick in the book on the most obscure sites they could find, hoping someone forgot to escape an SQL query here or there.

I don't know why I'm responding to an AC sitting at a -1, but the image was one I uploaded to the host, and your reading skills are sorely lacking, son. The <img> TAG was removed as well as the image itself. As to "loneliness", I was married at the time, with plenty of meatspace friends, and two daughters that loved playing Quake on our home network with me (and usually kicking my ass at the game).

Now go crawl back under your bridge, Mr. Sony executive. Or better yet, do the world a favor and shoot yo

The hacking, compromising, or intrusion of a computer system has nothing to do with the copying/distribution of copy protected works. The unlawful access of a computer system is already against the law and there is nothing this act would do to improve security because security is up to each individual organization and how they implement it.

First, I disagree with the RIAA's conclusion. However I also disagree with your analogy. It is illegal for me to steal from you, yet the fact that it is illegal doesn't mean you should leave your door unlocked. This proposal is more akin to adding extra locked doors to the building your apartment is in to prevent unauthorized or questionable people from getting in. Again I want to point out that I disagree with the RIAA's conclusion, but there is SOME logic involved, only a little.

I never said anything about not practicing good security. If someone steals from you because of bad security, the criminal is still liable for damages (if he can be traced in the first place). Should businesses be liable to protect their customers' data? Of course they should, I'm for that entirely. However, the Protect IP Act looks like it has absolutely nothing to do with that whatsoever and it wouldn't help at all.

The ability of our country to lead -- and the ability of U.S. companies to create employment -- will depend upon our continued success.

Neil Turkewitz, Executive Vice President, International, RIAA

this is how the 'letter' on the riaa website ends.

'the ability of our country to lead': well, since engineering and manufacturing of actual goods has gone overseas, I suppose only you, your ilk and fast food workers are what we have left in the US. if the way we 'lead' the world is via your methods, I think we are better off not leading.

'US companies creating employment': lawyers and folks like that. yup. but do we want more of THAT kind of US employment?

and I even question the 'continued success' part. your buying base outright hates you and side-steps you at every turn. you war on them and wonder why they hate you and don't continue paying for your existence?

neil, you are so fucking full of yourself. probably considered a trait of success at the place you work at, though...

Why dont we do one better and to extend protections to the RIAA and others just flat out ban copyrighted material from the internet...we could go back to the days when "lawlessness" ruled the internet but it was also inherently more useful.

They need to be quicker on their feet to out adapt the world of technology. Counter measures roll out faster than laws countering measures. All it does is create some vicious enemies with long memories. The RIAA needs to STFU and come up with a modern working business model for the digital age. It doesn't take much brain activity to come up with something that could solve this problem, so what the hell is their problem?

The result of aggressive filtering and censorship like that in the US will be a decentralization of the Internet. Instead of relying on a few easily controlled DNS servers and other components, people will move to decentralized, self-validating systems that will be even harder for governments to control. And people will start encrypting their traffic regularly. So, go ahead, make our days!

Mandatory Public key encryption all the way down to the Intel processor level.

Your data won't work on someone else's CPU, you'll have to exchange computers. Any "unsigned" media (eg: recorded by routing spk to line-in), would either not play, or require a content creator's license.

I seriously hope it doesn't come to that, but I wouldn't doubt it for a moment.

Time to 1) donate to open-source hardware projects and 2) Stop buying Intel or other processors that support such things (to say nothing of the

I knew this was going to happen. Hackers do more harm than good for the rest of us just because they want to stroke their egos.... of course the egos of executives at Hollywood need to be stroked to at our own expense.

I am just sick of it and people who do not think about the repurcusions of their sensless actions. I am not worried about the RIAA more than I am about the federal government getting involved with more acts to limit liberty and monitor all our data and put caps on our bandwidth so the NSA can monitor everything.

You have more control over the governments actions that you do over hackers' actions.... So apply pressure where it's most effective.